Voting has begun in most of the continental US as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump finished their race across key battleground states, arriving in the cities where they will watch returns in what polls suggest is one of the closest presidential contests in modern history.
Trump touched down in south Florida on Tuesday morning after wrapping his campaign in the swing state of Michigan, where he held his final rally in the same city he finished the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Grand Rapids. Harris arrived in Washington DC, after closing her campaign with a star-studded appearance in Philadelphia.
By 11am ET, polls had opened across the country, including the seven swing states that are expected to decide the race. According to the Financial Times poll tracker, Harris holds a 1.5 percentage point lead over Trump nationally.
But among the swing states, the vice-president has a narrow lead only in Michigan and Wisconsin, while Nevada is even and Trump has a small edge in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.
The US dollar weakened on Tuesday, down 0.2 per cent against a basket of its rivals, as some investors unwound their bets on a Trump victory.
The small New Hampshire hamlet of Dixville Notch, which prides itself in reporting the first results every four years, appeared to be a harbinger of what is to come, reporting that Harris and Trump had split their six votes 3-3.
Senior Harris campaign officials said they were on track to win a close contest and believed undecided voters were moving to their side, but they also acknowledged that it could take days to get a final result.
“We are very focused on staying calm and confident throughout this period,” Jen O’ Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign chair, told reporters on Monday afternoon.
At her final rally at the Philadelphia Art Museum, Harris said America was ready for a “fresh start”. Pennsylvania is the biggest of the swing states that will decide the election, with 19 electoral votes.
“One more day, just one more day in the most consequential election of our lifetime. And the momentum is on our side,” she said.
Trump also campaigned in Pennsylvania on Monday, promising supporters in Pittsburgh a new “golden age” for the country if he were to win a second term in office, before closing his travels in Grand Rapids with a sprawling speech that ended past 2am on Tuesday.
“This is the last one,” he said of the event as he urged supporters to vote. “If we get out our people, it’s over, there’s nothing they can do about it . . . To make you feel a little guilty, we would only have you to blame.”
The candidates’ focus on Pennsylvania was an indication of how important the state had become in their respective paths to victory.
Before her closing rally in the state’s largest city, Harris made appearances in the Lehigh Valley region, which has a large Puerto Rican community. Harris sought to boost her support among Latinos after a comedian at a Trump rally in New York made offensive comments about the Caribbean island and US territory last month.
“I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy . . . we are fighting for a democracy right now,” she said.
Harris was supported by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York member of the House of Representatives, and by rapper Fat Joe, who urged Latinos to support Harris. “Where is your orgullo? Where is your pride?” the rapper said.
After days of vitriolic and angry campaign rallies that focused more on his grievances against his political foes and bizarre vows to “protect” women, Trump attempted to recalibrate his message on the economy and immigration.
In Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke in front of female supporters holding up pink signs that read: “Women for Trump.”
In Pittsburgh, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, with whom Trump openly feuded a few years ago, appeared at his rally to endorse him, while Joe Rogan, the podcaster with a large male following, also announced his support.
“A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper . . . your pay cheques will be higher, your streets will be safer and cleaner, your communities will be richer and your future will be brighter than ever before,” Trump told the crowd in Pittsburgh.
Trump’s efforts to project a more positive message to voters were undermined when JD Vance, his running mate, insulted Harris during a campaign stop in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier in the day.
“In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington DC, and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris,” Vance said.
In Grand Rapids, Trump called Harris a “very low-IQ person” and a “radical left lunatic who destroyed San Francisco”.
Some people who attended Trump’s Pittsburgh rally had travelled long distances. Renée Hughes, a retiree, flew from Sitges, Spain, to vote and attend the rally in her hometown.
“We have to get our country back,” she said. “We have become an embarrassment. Trump is a real person. He gets us, the normal people, not the elites.”
Holly Gallogly, a retired teacher from Pittsburgh, on the other hand, said: “I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but in the past few months I have moved to become undecided because I struggle with the hate rhetoric.”
Additional reporting by Ian Smith